Rising to the top of dough handling

DOWSON FOOD MACHINERY I PROFILE

to the

of dough

When most of us buy a pre-sliced loaf of bread, or a pack of hamburger rolls, few of us stop to think about the journey that those items took to reach that shelf fresh, perfectly baked and ready for your table. Dowson Food Machinery is part of the bakery value chain that makes that purchase possible. The company’s Sales Manager, Lee Croucher, unveiled the machines that ensure that your favourite baked goods are always available. Article by Richard Hagan.

Let’s be honest: we’re spoiled. We watch our movies and TV shows ondemand, on days and at times that are convenient for us. We buy products without ever setting foot in a shop or even leaving the house, and then they’re delivered to our door the next day. And we never have to wonder about the answer to any question because we carry the power of the internet – the sum total of human knowledge – in our pockets wherever we go.

So it’s difficult for some of us to imagine that pre-sliced loaves of bread – something we accept as a common convenience today – were once such a novelty that the first pre-sliced loaf was marketed specifically on the fact that it was sold pre-sliced. That marketing campaign spawned the nowcommon phrase, ‘the best thing since sliced bread’.

While pre-sliced loaves are no longer at the forefront of marketing campaigns, the technology responsible for their creation hasn’t stood still. Far from it.

One of the companies leading the charge in the evolution of the machinery that gave us sliced bread – not to mention the many behind-the-scenes bakery innovations since then – is Dowson Food Machinery.

A proven reputation

Dowson Food Machinery was established in 1982 in Yorkshire and, according to Sales Manager Lee Croucher, it soon established itself as a vital player in the bakery industry value chain – a position it still holds today.

“The company developed (and still maintains) a reputation for providing quality British engineering solutions to often very complex bakery production challenges,” he said. “We supply bespoke equipment, service and support to many of the biggest bakery groups, as well as to smaller independent, artisanal bakeries globally.”

Dowson’s portfolio is built around two main production ranges: machinery for dough handling at the beginning of a bakery production line – including bread, tortillas, wraps, burger buns and other rolls – and then the machinery that receives, slices and packs the baked products once they come out of the oven. It also offers machinery for dicing bread products up into croutons.

The company’s full engineering and design department is also always on hand to ensure that it is able to service even the most challenging of client production needs.

Baked-in, high-tech production

In 2017, Dowson moved into its huge new state-of-the-art, purpose-built facility. With a footprint of 48,000 sqft, its modern factory hosts the company’s manufacturing lines for its slicers, baggers, dividers and crouton cutters, along with its tortilla and bun machinery production lines. Unusually for this industry, the company’s factory is a modern, custom-built facility.

“It’s modernised and future-proofed,” confirmed Mr Croucher. “There’s less maintenance, it’s more

DOWSON FOOD MACHINERY I PROFILE

environmentally-friendly and it’s generally a better place to work.” The facility is also a great promotional tool for the company’s clients.

“We’re able to show our clients a nice, modern, clean facility. It adds weight to our proposals to them. It shows that we’re reinvesting in all areas of the business and that gives them the confidence to move forward with us.”

Altogether, Dowson Food Machinery employs approximately 50 staff – a complement that is constantly growing to meet the ever-increasing demand for the company’s equipment.

Tasty tortilla technology

Dowson’s tortilla handling equipment is a uniquely popular range with customers around the world.

“We produce a lot of equipment for tortilla lines,” said Mr Croucher. “We’ll typically supply the front end machinery such as the divider moulder – which divides up the dough into dough balls. This part of a tortilla production line is usually the most expensive. We supply a lot of these into Mexico, America and Poland.”

A European client recently ordered a large tortilla installation. Mr Croucher revealed the project, which is currently being commissioned, has a sevenfigure valuation.

“The client is very excited because they used to buy the tortilla product in, but they’ve now invested in their own capacity. So it’s the start of a new chapter in product development for the customer. To support them, we’ve provided our process expertise and knowledge at every step of the way and will continue to do so.”

Meanwhile, the company has recently delivered a £400,000 Dough Divider equipment order to a client in Poland, and a similar £600,000 order of Dough Dividers to a US client. However, its nontortilla production equipment continues to see encouraging growth as well, according to Mr Croucher.

“Earlier in 2021 we delivered a UK order worth £250,000 of Dough Dividers and a £500,000 order of noodle line equipment into the Asian market,” he recalled. “We also supplied a custom-built extrawide slicer for artisan bread, to the value of £65,000. In addition, to these mentioned orders, there are many orders of bread slicing and bagging machines that are being manufactured but have yet to be delivered for clients across Europe.

Covid cooking trends

With Covid-related lockdowns forcing consumers globally to cook and eat more frequently at home, companies operating in the food production space, including Dowson, have noted the emergence of a variety of new food trends.

“We’ve seen a worldwide increase in wrap sales, which in turn means that we have sold many more divider/rounder machines than usual,” remarked Mr Croucher. “On top of that, we’ve seen a change in bread sales to a more artisan-style product for which we have developed a dedicated slicer.”

The shift to artisanal bread and wraps is indicative of consumers who are looking for meal solutions that are quick and easy to prepare, but that’s not the whole picture.

“People are reducing their intake of bread products, so for example, they’re making a pizza on a wrap so that the quantity of bread involved is much less,” Mr Croucher detailed. “Wraps are also quite a universal product that you can use for a variety of meal types.”

He added: “Artisan sourdough products are also gaining in popularity, and our artisan bread slicers will slice those, too. While we expect tinned bread to rebound in popularity at some point, for now, sourdough bread and wraps are on-trend.”

Gluten-free complexities

For those of us not intimately involved in dough handling, it may come as a surprise that gluten-free dough handling requires specialised machinery. Gluten-free products are becoming increasingly popular and consequently, Dowson has developed specialised gluten-free dough handling equipment for clients wishing to embrace gluten-free production lines.

“There are slightly different components in gluten-free machinery,” noted Mr Croucher. “The dough isn’t as easy to mould, and you also want to prevent it from sticking together. Therefore, we have to tweak and alter certain parts of the machinery, but there’s no one-size-fits-all approach.

“That’s why we ask loads of questions at the beginning of the enquiry to quantify a client’s particular needs correctly.We’ll ask questions like, ‘What is the size of the product? What are your recipes? What is the required quantity?’. Some clients come into the production business having never made a thing in their life. That’s where we are able to step in and help them with our knowledge and engineering expertise.”

A slice of the future

With the ongoing global demand for its tortilla equipment showing no signs of slowing, Dowson is looking to aggressively increase its market share in that space. “We’re also looking to expand into different methods of slicing,” Mr Croucher confirmed.

The company has set itself ambitious sales targets as well to increase turnover by 50% in the 2022 financial year in difficult circumstances.

“On top of that sales target, we want to expand our fabrication capacity significantly by investing in new equipment,” he concluded. n